Fugitive Ex-Billionaire Batista Flying to Brazil to Face Arrest

(Bloomberg) -- Eike Batista, once Brazil’s wealthiest man, is on an overnight flight from New York City to Rio de Janeiro where police are waiting to arrest him.

Federal prosecutors accuse Batista of money laundering and corruption, including the payment of $16.5 million in bribes to former Rio Governor Sergio Cabral, jailed in November. Batista and Cabral are targets in the long-running Carwash investigation that revealed a kickback scheme involving Brazil’s biggest builders and the state-run oil producer Petrobras. The probe has since advanced to threaten sitting legislators, and a prospective plea bargain from Batista could further rankle the political establishment.

Batista was seen at the lobby of John F. Kennedy International airport as he prepared to board a flight to Rio. He took pictures with fellow travelers and spoke to a Globo TV journalist.

“I’m coming back to face justice as is my duty,” he told the reporter. “It’s time to help clear things up.”

Police had sought to arrest Batista four days earlier in Rio. In a pre-dawn raid of his hillside mansion on Thursday, they found a Lamborghini Aventador luxury sports car parked in his living room and about 100,000 reais ($30,000) in cash inside a safe, but not their suspect, who had flown to New York less than 36 hours before. Calling him a fugitive, Brazilian authorities later included Batista’s name on Interpol’s list of wanted persons.

His lawyer, Fernando Martins, confirmed that Batista will turn himself in to authorities Monday. He said in a prior statement that Batista was abroad on business, and that he wasn’t negotiating terms for his return.

Viagra, Elysium

Batista’s commodities and logistics empire raised his personal fortune to more than $30 billion at the start of the decade, transforming him into Brazil’s richest man and one of the wealthiest people in the world. Those riches evaporated after his group of startups went bust under a mountain of debt and insider trading investigations. At one point in 2015 he gained the rare distinction of “negative billionaire” when his net worth sank to more than $1 billion in debt.

Batista remained a colorful personality, and vowed to stage a comeback. He has promoted ventures including a generic version of the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, cattle cloning and biomass exports. More recently he touted a line of toothpaste, named Elysium, that uses hydroxyapatite instead of fluoride to regenerate tooth enamel. 

‘Avoid Prison’

Batista wrote in the introduction to his 2011 autobiography that, while he speaks five languages, he didn’t complete his metallurgical engineering studies at university. In that case, he wouldn’t be imprisoned in the unit reserved for people with college degrees, such as former governor Cabral, according to the press office of Rio’s prison administration secretariat.

The prospect of being shipped to a common jail cell could provide Batista additional incentive to strike a plea bargain, said Joao Augusto de Castro Neves, Latin America director at the political consulting firm Eurasia Group. Ilona Szabo, executive director of Rio-based security think tank Igarape Institute, said Batista could have his own cell within the common block to reduce the risk of harm to a man who may provide valuable information to investigators.

“Eike will want to avoid prison and will be willing to offer something,” Castro Neves said by phone. “The ball will be in prosecutors’ court to see whether they accept it. As Carwash continues, there’s an argument to be made that if you’re late to the game you have less to offer.”

Brazil’s overcrowded prison system has become a flash-point as of late, with several violent rebellions erupting across the country. In Rio’s Bangu facility, the population is more than quadruple the prison’s capacity, according to information from Rio state’s office of public defenders.

--With assistance from Sabrina Valle To contact the reporter on this story: David Biller in Rio de Janeiro at dbiller1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vivianne Rodrigues at vrodrigues3@bloomberg.net, Walter Brandimarte